Technical reports and journal articles are both used to report the results of research and development projects. There are differences between the two that are driven by the objectives of each form of reporting.

The primary objective of journal articles is to report results of experimental and/or theoretical scientific investigations to enhance the body of scientific knowledge. This is the primary way that (1) science advances and (2) the scientific community communicates among its members and practitioners. Typically, there are space limitations prescribed by the journal publisher that limit the length of journal articles usually to only a few pages. Journal articles are almost always subjected to a rigorous peer review process before they are accepted for publication.

How did sharing data lead to progress on Alzheimer’s? A collaborative effort, the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, was formed to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in the human brain. The key was to share all the data, making every finding public immediately – “available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world.”

One of the more fascinating pieces of work at a DOE National Laboratory was the examination of an ancient work by Archimedes on parchment that had been erased, written over, and so, mostly, lost to history. Lost, that is, until the SLAC synchrotron X-ray beam tore into the parchment and was able to let us see and read much of the original Archimedean text. Archimedes would have used a lab notebook, if he had had paper, or a computer and a thumb-drive to record his work if they had been available, but he did not live long enough to invent those things, which he probably could have if given the time. One hopes that before his study was erased, others were able to read it, profit from its insights, and use the knowledge as a springboard to another discovery. That’s one way we make progress.

We often hear that with declining costs in storage, increased bandwidth, and faster processing speeds, the power and potential of the electronic age to spread and communicate science are amazing things to ponder. I guess. But the work can still be lost, no matter how it is recorded. And some material, let’s face it, isn’t worth saving. Between this blog and Archimedes’ method of mechanical theorems, the work that SLAC was looking at, which would you save? What is needed now, as then, is someone to care about preserving the scientific findings that are worth preserving.

OSTI's current services accelerate science through what is largely a kind of card file. We point people to particular pieces of literature or data that meet certain search criteria. From there, people can build on what those pieces of information tell them and achieve new discoveries and inventions.

The success of Google has been so profound that the word “Google” is now considered a verb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_(verb) “To Google” has come to mean to search the web via the free search engine provided by Google, Inc. The adjective derived from the verb “Google” is “Googleable.” Similarly, the antonym of “Googleable” is “non-Googleable,” which turns out to be an especially useful word. For most practical purposes, the term “non-Googleable” is synonymous with the phrase “deep web.” The major difference between the word and the phrase in a world where Google, Inc., is the largest capitalized company is that the term non-Googleable is intuitively understood.

Anyway, it is generally acknowledged among students of the web that the bulk of the information in it is non-Googleable, a fact which typically comes as a surprise to people who do not study the web. In particular, the information residing in databases is often non-Googleable, and it often happens that scieintific and technical information resides in databases of documents.